What is Startup Weekend?

Startup Weekend is a global network of passionate leaders and entrepreneurs on a mission to inspire, educate, and empower individuals, teams and communities. Come share ideas, form teams, and launch startups.

Past event…

Ever wondered what it takes to be an entrepreneur?

The professional and personal challenges, the high and lows, the failures and the success?

Startup Weekend is a global grassroots movement of active and empowered entrepreneurs who are learning the basics of founding startups and launching successful ventures. It is the largest community of passionate entrepreneurs with over 1800 past events in 120 countries around the world in 2014.

The non-profit organization is headquartered in Seattle, Washington but Startup Weekend organizers and facilitators can be found in over 200 cities around the world. From Mongolia to South Africa to London to Brazil, people around the globe are coming together for weekend long workshops to pitch ideas, form teams, and start companies.

All Startup Weekend events follow the same basic model: anyone is welcome to pitch their startup idea and receive feedback from their peers. Teams organically form around the top ideas (as determined by popular vote) and then it’s a 54 hour frenzy of business model creation, coding, designing, and market validation. The weekends culminate with presentations in front of local entrepreneurial leaders with another opportunity for critical feedback.

Whether entrepreneurs found companies, find a cofounder, meet someone new, or learn a skill far outside their usual 9-to-5, everyone is guaranteed to leave the event better prepared to navigate the chaotic but fun world of startups. If you want to put yourself in the shoes of an entrepreneur, register now for the best weekend of your life!

1st Prize:
1.) Invitation to a 16-Week Mentorship Program that will assist with your Startup.
2.) Upon successful completion of the program you will receive a Tk-50,000.00 seed funding.
3.) 6 months access & dedicated work space in hubdhaka (Tk-60,000 value). Hubdhaka is a co-working space where startup’s can work on their idea with other like minded individuals in a professional setting.

2nd Prize:
1.) Invitation to a 16-Week Mentorship Program that will assist with your Startup.
2.) Upon successful completion of the program you will receive a Tk-25,000.00 seed funding.
3.) 3 months access & dedicated work space in hubdhaka (Tk-30,000 value). Hubdhaka is a co-working space where startup’s can work on their idea with other like minded individuals in a professional setting.

3rd Prize:
1.) Invitation to a 16-Week Mentorship Program that will assist with your Startup.
2.) Upon successful completion of the program you will receive a Tk-15,000.00 seed funding.
3.) 2 months access & dedicated work space in hubdhaka (Tk-20,000 value). Hubdhaka is a co-working space where startup’s can work on their idea with other like minded individuals in a professional setting.

Tanveer Ali

Born and raised in Toronto, Tanveer Ali is an Executive Director at Inflection Ventures, a seed-stage tech fund with investments primarily in Silicon Valley

Nash Islam

Entrepreneur

Nash, Tech Wiz @ G&R Nash is an entrepreneur & tech community organizer from America who landed in Bangladesh in 2012. He is currently CEO of G&R Ad Network, Bangladesh’s leading online ad network, and co-founder at Mangoes Mobile. He actively invests in US tech companies as a partner at Inflection Ventures and as an angel investor. Nash began his career at Google, working in both California & Singapore, and also worked at mobile ads start-up AdMob. In his free time, Nash organizes Google Business Group meetups and participates in tech community events.

Pankaj Jain

Investor / Venture Capitalist

Pankaj Jain is a Venture Partner at 500 Startups, a seed fund and accelerator program based in Mountain View, Ca. After getting his B.S. from NYU’s Stern School of Business, Pankaj spent over 12 years in the Finance and Technology industry managing network infrastructure, real-time and meta data repositories as well as operations for large financial firms like JP Morgan and hedge funds such as Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM).

At Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM), Jain served in various roles including enterprise mortgage risk management and application development from.

From there, Pankaj went on to become one of the founding employees of GlobeOp Financial Services in late 1999, where he headed the firm’s trade management and pricing infrastructure group along with customer service.

In 2007, Pankaj’s adventures in India began, when he decided he wanted to pack up his belongings and relocate there to become an entrepreneur. He started a technology company focusing initially on the under-served. In 2008, Pankaj became a co-founder at the HeadStart Network Foundation and the efforts in Delhi. In late 2010, he began working with Startup Weekend as a volunteer to launch Startup Weekend in India. As Founder and Country Coordinator of Startup Weekend India, since early 2011, Pankaj has helped almost two thousand students, entrepreneurs and aspirants across India to be part of a larger community, work at startups, build companies in India and some have taken the next step of raising funding.

In early 2012, he began consulting with TLabs, an Indian accelerator, where he helped pick startups to bring into the program and invest in.

Since 2007, Jain has played an integral part in helping form India's nascent startup ecosystem as an entrepreneur, community builder, angel investor and a VC. From the time he started till today, he is thrilled with the progress India has made in building the ecosystem and is excited about emerging opportunities.

Fayaz Taher

Serial Entrepreneur

Fayaz, Startup Champ @ BDtech, a serial entrepreneur, investor, mentor and startup champion from Bangladesh and the current CEO of Fortuna, an innovative group of companies invested across various industries.

Fayaz also co-founded BDtech, which is a community for startup enthusiasts and is leading the efforts to form an angel investor group. Fayaz in the past has organized Facebook Developer Garage & Ruby Tech event.

Iraj Islam

Co-Founder, NewsCred

Iraj is a Bangladeshi-Swedish serial entrepreneur, software engineer and product designer. He is passionate about building innovative products that change the world. Iraj was named Sweden's 3rd hottest entrepreneur by Swedish magazine InternetWorld in 2006, he was also named in the Silicon Alley 100 2012 by Business Insider.

Mirza Salman Hossain Beg

Marketing & Sales

Salman is a dreamer and practitioner of innovation. He is a passionate digital technology and marketing expert who has substantial success in building brands and getting bottom-line results for businesses. He is often the social glue, motivator and connector of rest of the entrepreneurial geniuses and skilled professionals around him.

Salman is currently the Head of Sales and Marketing at Green and Red Technologies, the first online advertising network in Bangladesh. He is also the co-founder of Google Business Group Dhaka, a technology community driven network affiliated with Google. He is the co-organizer of TEDxDhaka, an independently organized TED event, focused on bringing new ideas to light, while he is also the Founding Vice-Curator of Global Shapers Dhaka Hub of World Economic Forum, a dynamic hive of entrepreneurs, movers and shakers of the town. He recently founded the tech based talent hunting platform called InternCITY, that look forward to become the premiere young talent search media. Previously he worked for Qubee, one of the pioneer WiMax internet service provider in country, BYLC - Bangladesh Youth Leadership Center and Daily Prothom-Alo in various capacity.

Muhammed Nazimuddaula (Milon)

Nazimuddaula is a digital media enthusiast who loves to create beautiful websites. Passionate about simplifying the complex requirements and delivering great project plans for better user experience. In 2010, he co-founded G&R with an aim to create the first online display ad network in Bangladesh. He is also the co-founder of Color Talking, a project to test a variety online products for Bangladeshi web audiences with the aim to graduate them to real businesses. A Graduate from University of Dhaka majoring Graphic Design, Nazimuddaula is also a passionate Bangla Typographer and the co-designer of widely known Bangla Font for Robi.

Sheikh Shuvo

Regional Operations Manager

Sheikh Shuvo is on the Operations Team at Startup Weekend and manages events across MENA, Asia, and Australia.

Originally born in Bangladesh, Sheikh was raised in New York City. He graduated from Cornell University with a B.A. in Government, with a focus on political philosophy. He has worked in a wide range of industries ranging from real estate marketing, municipal government, outdoor education, and, most recently, in healthcare software.

He currently splits his time between Seattle, WA & Delhi, India. Sheikh is an avid outdoorsman, cook, and travel enthusiast.

Minhaz Anwar

Bangladesh Startup Cup

Minhaz is an StartUp Activist and one of the pioneers of Bangladesh StartUp movement which has been abuzz across the country of late. With 15+ years of experience in local business landscape and development domain he realised that it is the young entrepreneurs of Bangladesh who would change the game for Bangladesh. He has been working on Business Incubation, StartUp mentoring and Opportunity Brokering for the last 5 years through his dream venture BizCube, Bangladesh’s first incubator proper. He is the licensee of Bangladesh StartUp Cup and host of this 7-month long mentorship driven business model competition in Bangladesh.

Bijon Islam

Co-founder, LightCastle BD

Having worked for four years in strategy, planning & analysis, finance and treasury in the corporate and investment banking wing at one of the world’s largest financial institutions, Citibank N.A., Bijon plays a central role in the formation of LightCastle Partners. He started his career with Citi N.A. as a management associate (MA) and has since then worked in a variety of episodic deals including Bangladesh’s first Interest Rate Swap, Equity Convertible Bonds, Largest IPO, Microfinance Securitization and Block Equity Trades.

After graduating from the MA program, Bijon’s chief responsibility revolved around heading the strategy planning and analysis unit. Working with regional teams across Singapore, Hong Kong, and India, he played a major role in aligning Bangladesh as an important piece in Citi’s growth strategy in Asia. Due to outstanding performance, Bijon had received the CEO Excellence Awards for two years in a row in the organization.

Contrary to his corporate lifestyle, Bijon is also quite keen on giving back to society. Since 2009, he devoted many of his weekends to Bangladesh Youth Leadership Center (BYLC), a non-profit leadership institute, in the capacity of a strategy affiliate. In this role, he was responsible for recruiting youth leaders for BYLC’s signature leadership program and conducted multiple entrepreneurial workshops.

Bijon holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), University of Dhaka. Presently he is pursuing his Executive MBA from the same institute. He spends his leisure time watching anime movies.

Mustafiz Khan

Founder, Startup Dhaka

Mustafiz, Rebel Leader @ StartupDhaka Mustafiz is an angel investor, startup community organiser, marketer and a photographer shuttling between Singapore and Bangladesh. He started his career as an entrepreneur and later managed brand like HSBC in several countries. He is a voracious reader, technology enthusiasts, and a film buff.

Samira Himika

Entreprenuer

Samira Zuberi Himika is an entrepreneur, development issue and communications specialist, campaigner, art promoter and a vocalist. She is the Founder & Managing Director of Team Engine - a social good company (www.tm-engine.com) and also the founder of Social Good Foundation. Himika is actively involved in mentoring and promoting entrepreneurs, artisans and creative minds through her organizations.

Throughout her work life, she has been dedicatedly producing many first-of-its kind projects and platforms for society and people.

Her previous team (BBC Janala team) received a global award - BBC Reith Award 2010 (best craft category) extraordinary innovation in enabling people to learn English language through mobile technology – till February 2012 only the website directly got 10 million people individual users and 18 million phone calls were made into the mobile platform her team created for mobile lessons. Till she resigned from BBC World Service Trust in 2009 she also lead all communications and media activities for BBC Sanglap, BBC BUZZ and World Debate in Bangladesh. In 2010, She had also conceptualized and lead GPHouse Profiling - a conceptual Art Hub which is first conceptually curated art project for any MNC in Bangladesh.

In 2013, as Team Engine initiative, Himika conceptualized and introduced country’s first summit, “National Entrepreneur Summit”, celebrated by more than 32,000 entrepreneurs and SMEs from around Bangladesh. Currently she is leading major nationwide project of team engine- ALCHEMY (Healthy Living and Telemedicine revolution), Rise for GDP Growth (support & Service to Entrepreneurs and SMEs), Bangla OCR and Text-to Speech development. From Social Good Foundation, she is working with under-represented and talented craftsmen and inventors worldwide and providing supports needed. She has dedicatedly working to enable real socio-economic development through bridging gaps in the relevant fields and bottom bullions and missing-middles . Prior to founding Team Engine and Social Good Foundation, till 2009, she worked in the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) as Deputy Head, UNDP as Communications specialist and in different NGOs as Development expert. For last 15
years she has been an active figure as a cultural campaigner in Music, Visual art fields as well. Himika studied Media Communications, Finance and Development Studies in her graduation and masters.

Fayaz Taher

Serial Entreprenuer

Fayaz, Startup Champ @ BDtech, a serial entrepreneur, investor, mentor and startup champion from Bangladesh and the current CEO of Fortuna, an innovative group of companies invested across various industries.
Fayaz also co-founded BDtech, which is a community for startup enthusiasts and is leading the efforts to form an angel investor group. Fayaz in the past has organized Facebook Developer Garage & Ruby Tech event.

Nazmul Ahmed (Najm)

Founder, Ennovision

Najm has been a serial entrepreneur since age 14. His work in establishing Bangladesh Changemakers social network, running operations and branding for Experience Bangladesh, a US based company since his undergrad years at Dhaka University, working with cross disciplinary teams in the US, UK, Italy and Australia

Riyad Husain

Founder, Magnito Digital

A Marketing Entrepreneur from Dhaka, Riyad is the CEO of Magnito Digital, one of the leading full service digital agencies of Bangladesh. He also co-founded ROOT Marketing Services, Printex Limited and a social initiative Zakat Connect.

Riyad is one of the organizers of Google Business Groups (GBG), Dhaka, a fast growing non-profit community under the Google Outreach Program. Highly involved in the Bangladeshi StartUp scene, he regularly speaks at various conferences and mentors young StartUps.

Prior to starting business, Riyad worked for Arcadia Group in UK. Riyad has a BA (honours) degree from Richmond University, UK. In his free time, Riyad plays football and is a travel addict!

Razin Mustafiz

Product Manager, NewsCred

Razin Mustafiz is a Product Manager at NewsCred. Prior to NewsCred, Razin was a strategy consultant at Analysis Group in Boston. He has also worked at the Grameen Bank and founded a financial literacy initiative for immigrants in Maine. Razin studied economics and math at Bates College where he was a Charles Dana Scholar and a Hoffman Fellow. His areas of expertise include product management, user experience design, and operations.

Alyssa Ransbury

Operations / Team Dynamics

Alyssa Ransbury is an American sociologist, technology enthusiast, and teacher. Born and raised in California, she studied Sociology and Religious Studies at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. She was awarded a Fulbright fellowship from the US Government in 2012 to teach English in Bangladesh at Viqarunnisa Noon School. She is now the Head of Operations at G&R, Bangladesh's leading online ad network, where she trains Bangladeshi professionals and entrepreneurs how to leverage the internet to develop, implement, and monetize their ideas. Alyssa is passionate about empowering more women to enter the technology sector through events like Startup Weekend.

Rafi Mustafa

With over 10 years experience in 4 different continents, Rafi has a solid understanding of how to deal with businesses and consumers across Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Oman, U.A.E. and Qatar . His clientele ranged from SMEs to large corporations.

Startup Junkie
Sajid Islam is the Founder & CEO of Shetu. He began his career as a software developer and is a graduate & member of The Founders Institute, a California based Tech startup Accelerator. In the past, he also founded and successfully exited a software consulting services business. He is currently working as the Global Support Product Manager for Hewlett-Packard. Contact Tribe Chief at sajid@shetu.org